I don’t use software very often. I’ve never recorded a piece of music using only software. Until today.
With work looming early, and the promise of a late evening, a full modular patch just isn’t in the cards today. So I decided to pull out the iPad and create…something. Though just a little bit of effort went into it, I’m supremely happy with the result.
The patch is simple. The Alexandernaut Fugue Machine, a wonderfully conceived four head interactive midi piano roll where each head can be sent in any direction, at any speed or octave, sent 3 channels of midi data to Klevgrand Speldosa, a beautiful music box plugin for iPad, while sending a fourth stream of midi data to Decent Sampler loaded with the DK Solo Cello Spurs sample pack. Both software instruments are sent to the Eventide BlackHole Reverb, and out.
It’s not a super low effort day, I needed to figure out how to do a few things, and come up with a quick and dirty improvisation, but it’s not a high effort day. Whatever effort, the result is wonderful; in the spirit of Olafur Arnalds. After eight modular recordings in six days I think I can forgive myself.
I like wavetables and I like drones. Jamuary 6 saw both. A modulated quad wavetable LFO modulating the levels of a quad wavetable oscillator. It’s a patch I’ve been wanting to try for a while, and Jamuary is the perfect time to experiment with new techniques.
There are a lot of moving parts in this patch. The base creating the ever-changing drone is four unsynced LFOs from Kermit Mk3 controlling the levels of the four outputs from the E370 in the Intellijel Amps. These four outputs were patched to the ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan and then to the mixer. The pan CV inputs of the latter three channels were modulated by the Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator. The stereo signal from Sum Mix & Pan went to both the output as well as to a second mixer for summing to mono before being routed to the Verbos Multi-Delay Processor. The mono output of the MDP, which only has the dry signal,1 went to the output mixer, while two of the taps were routed to the Verbos Scan & Pan for hard panning left and right. All three of these signals were mixed and sent to the output.
Although I like the drive the MDP created, it largely defeated the panning of the three E370 outputs. I’d have been better served to run the stereo signal from the Sum Mix & Pan to a stereo distortion for some added drive so as not to throw a cover over subtle movement in the stereo space, but I do like the overall result. The MDP is a fantastic source for overdrive, and is a different sort than a full blown distortion like Mimosa. It’s deep and warm, like a fuzzy blanket on a cold winter day.
There’s lots of modulation too, with the bulk of it being supplied by the Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster fed a Let’s Splosh, with its outputs modulating the waves in both the E370, and three of the four channels of Kermit. Let’s Splosh self-modulated both Gain and Damping to keep its outputs in constant flux.
To accompany the drone proper, I sent the panning wavetables from the Sum Mix & Pan and stereo delay taps from the MDP to a pair of unmodulated Dradds. Both are in Grain Mode, and both are time stretching, with the left channel in reverse at about 20% speed and the and the right channel in forward at a slow crawl. It’s a bit difficult to pick out in the mix, but the overall sound is very different without it, and the final result benefits greatly with it.
The final touch to the patch are the drips and crickets. This oscillator and envelope are both from Falistri, sent through the Holocene Non-Linear Memory Machine. Pitch and random triggering was provided by Sapel. The last free channel of the Addac506 controlled both the Freeze and Scanning of the buffer. Its EOF trigger turned Freeze on and off, with the EOR gate output gating the function output in a VCA, which was scanning the buffer. This little sub-patch took a little while to figure out, but the results are rewarding. I’d been wanting to mess with scanning the buffer of the NLMM ever since I heard this patch by Ras Thavas, and today seemed like the day. It was a fun patch that I’ll be sure to explore further in the future.
I was always sure that a Verbos system could do ambient, but it’s not what I read in their brand identity. Mark Verbos, the owner of Verbos, has noted several times in interviews that his main inspiration in both making music and instruments is his love for techno. The sounds his instruments make are raw, and there doesn’t seem a clear path to ambient paradise when I look at Verbos module faceplates. But in an interview I recently watched, Verbos mentioned that one of the first questions he was asked when the Harmonic Oscillator was whether it can do ambient drones, something he hadn’t considered at all when he was designing it. Nearly a decade later we know Verbos systems can used to perform ambient music, but it wasn’t until today, after a couple of days using sequencers and rhythms, that I finally decided to see what I could do.
The patch began with the Polyphonic Envelope, each of the four outputs to a different harmonic of the Harmonic Oscillator, with the All output patched to the fundamental. In a new technique for me, I decided to use blue noise from Sapel as an amplitude modulator for the fifth harmonic, which ended up being fantastic. I followed that up with very short, randomly generated pings to the eighth harmonic. As a means to more beef, I also frequency modulated the HO with its own second harmonic. The Mixed output of the HO was sent first through Amp & Tone for a bit of conditioning and resonance before going to the Multi-Delay Processor. The MDP was set to output the dry signal and some volume level delay taps, while I patched four separate individual delay tap outputs to the Scan & Pan for stereo-ification.
After some fuddling around with the Polyphonic Envelope, I finally got to a nice flow of envelopes, each triggered once the decay stage of the previous envelope begins in a beautiful cascade that cycles over and over. After a bit of figuring out some movement for the patch, I decided it was ready to record. Only this time, I decided on using some final reverb, my every trusty Walrus Audio Slöer, instead of relying solely on the reverb from the MDP. This was a great choice.
Having recorded the patch and still wanting more, I decided to process the Verbos voice through the Panharmonium (crossfaded saw waves) > the Bizarre Jezabel Pkhia, as well as the Dradd(s) to add some movement and edge, and recorded it again, so today we get another bonus patch.
I’m quite happy with how this patch turned out. This is definitely a route I’ll be exploring more in depth this year.
Today’s patch was a further exploration and curating of yesterday’s Verbos patch, with help from a couple of West Coast-y friends, Frap Tools Sapel, Brenso, and Falistri. Brenso played a pivotal support role in adding texture by supplying amplitude modulation via a triangle wave to Harmonic Oscillator’s Fundamental and the Final output to the Fifth Harmonic. Brenso’s wavefolder and wave shaper were triggered and modulated by Sapel. Harmonic Oscillator was the only sound source, being modulated by Voltage Multistage and Polyphonic Envelope. The mixed output went to Multi-Delay Processor. The saw wave was patched to Amp & Tone. It started out being pinged in LPG mode, before plugging in frequency modulation of the cutoff from Sequence Selector. Two of the MDP individual tap outputs (four and eight) are patched to Scan & Pan and hard panned left and right for some ping-pong action.
Like yesterday, this patch was also inspired by Stazma’s Verbos Harmonic Oscillator demo. I’m not really experienced with much of this Verbos case, so it’s a very rough draft, but a direction that I’m very much enjoying. The tone and texture of the Verbos ecosystem is intoxicating. Enough that’s it’s giving me some bad ideas….
I’ve had the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator and Multi-Delay Processor for a little over a year. My very first Jamuary patch ever used it. But as I was adding to my Verbos case over much of this last year, the HO and Co. went unused. I decided I want to change that, and so I did.
This patch is loosely based on a video by Stazma (AKA The Junglechrist), though there are certainly plenty of changes. It’s not a difficult patch, but the resulting audio is compelling. The amount of drive and saturation is wonderful.
Version 1
It’s starts with two smooth random voltages from the Frap Tools Sapel into the Fundamental and Fifth Harmonic to create a base drone. The random is constantly fluctuating, so the levels of those notes are a bit unstable. It follows with a very short, attenuated envelope triggered by the random triggers from Sapel in the Sixth Harmonic, and then again by another very short envelope into the Spectral Tilt CV input. The Final mixed output of the Harmonics is patched to the input of the Multi-Delay Processor, and straight to the output mixer.
Four of the Harmonic outputs from the HO (the Third, Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth) are patched to the Verbos Scan & Pan. It’s here that each harmonic is played, rather than directly on the HO interface. The harmonics panned, and sent to the second input on the Multi-Delay Processor for some of that saturated delay goodness.
Version 2
This version doesn’t change too much, but the changes are fundamental. I’m working on “stereo-fying” mono gear, and Verbos gives us a great way to do that with the Scan & Pan. Rather than patching harmonics from the HO to the Scan & Pan, I used four of the delay taps, (Five, Six, Seven, and Eight) and hard panned taps five and seven left, with taps six and eight panned right. The HO output and Scan & Pan outputs are patched straight to the mixer.
This change was great for the stereo-fication of the Harmonic Oscillator, but at the expense of drive. The dry signal has little or no drive outside of the saturated sines from each harmonic, with the delayed signal supplying it all. It does admittedly help with clarity. Next time I’ll run the output from the MDP to the mixer with only the Dry signal on the mixed output, which should give me back the drive I’m after.
I don’t really hate dancers, even if this patch might make you think I do.
I don’t trend towards rhythm driven music set to a time grid very often. And even when I do aim to have a rhythmic patch, it’s almost always doing something to mess with time. Jamuary 2501 is no exception.
The first patch of this wonderful Jamuary 2025 started as a desire to use an old and new piece of gear. I bought the Bizarre Jezabel Quarté a couple of years ago when I ran into several Bizarre Jezabel modules for sale at a retail shop in Germany. Until then, the only way to purchase one was to go through a labyrinthine process (for an American) of ordering directly.1 But when I first bought Quarté I didn’t get along with it well at all. I couldn’t figure out how to control the LPG, and what I got was a mess. The controls were crammed, and I sold it forthright. But a few months back I got another hankering to try the Quarté. The PT2399 delay chips are legendary for their lo-fi character, and the quad nature of it as a LPG and delay is right up my current alley of interest. I went on Reverb and grabbed the first one at a decent price, only this one was the updated Quarté Mk2, with a new wet/mixed switch, and some very clever normalizing across channels. The Mk2 can be used in several output configurations, including stereo or quad mono. But the crunch of the delay is what this module is all about.
Quarté Mk2 is not hard to use, but it is difficult to maneuver. Small, unmarked trim pots in very bad places make wiggling a chore when cables are patched in, particular the “t” and “lpgi” trim knobs. The introduction of a wet/mixed switch (which is a 50/50 mix) is very nice. The vactrol-based LPGs sound good, but are quite aggressive, and with a fairly short tail. It’s not always the right sort of strike, which is why I opted to use a Natural gate to articulate notes in this patch, with the Quarté as a delay only.
Most of this patch is pretty simple. Two outputs from the Joranalogue Generate 3 were mixed together and sent to a Natural Gate. The sequence is derived from the Joranalogue Step 8. Both the Natural Gate and Step 8 are clocked by Pam’s Pro Workout, from separate outputs clocked at different rates. The kick was made by Ringing CUNSA, and the hats were blue noise from Sapel sent through a HPF (also CUNSA). Both were triggered by a x8 click output, via the CuteLab Missed Opportunities at increasing levels of probability.
But why is this music for people who hate dancers? It’s pretty groovy. It’s a good tempo for the nightclub. But there is a wrench. At some points, there was an envelope that ripped through the sequence, disrupting the timing and jolting the groove. It’s sudden and unapologetic. The sequence always got back on the grid quickly, but not always in the same spot it was before things were rudely interrupted. It’s jolting and not conducive at all for dancing. I’m sure I’d get thrown out of the club were I to play something like this.
I love the idea of Jamuary. A month during which the goal is to produce something musical everyday. It’s a lofty goal, to be sure, and a worthy pursuit if you can manage it. Creating something everyday is a massive challenge. One that I’m unlikely to conquer. But unless I’m somehow misinterpreting Jamuary Guidelines, it’s okay.
I’ll be participating as often as I possibly can throughout the month. A jumpstart of several recordings is a nice thing to begin the year, and recording something new in short time frames encourages musicians to vary their approach and try new techniques. I greatly enjoyed participating for the first time last year, and hope to have as many or more recordings. I know I learned a lot about myself and my patching, and I hope to learn even more this year.
One thing I’m not afraid to admit is that I’m a delay junkie. I love delays. Analog delays, digital delays, reverse delays, pitched delays, but most especially tape delays. I love tape delays so much I have a real one. Uh, make that 2 of them. But I’ll also admit, a bit more tentatively in a misguided effort at fooling myself, that I haven’t really gotten much use from a stereo pair. I’ve gotten decent use from one, but not very much at all from the other.
One thing that I’d always wanted to do was to do old school ping pong delay with my 2 tape echoes. In a world of simple-to-use plugins, ping pong delay is normally just a check box or button click away, but in the analog hardware world, it takes careful and deliberate patching, along with lots of level adjustments along the way. In fact, it seems that ping pong delay with analog gear is a lost art. A dark magic lost in the olden times when you had to patch everything manually. The patch itself is not terribly hard, but it’s also not necessarily intuitive, which makes figuring it out a challenge. It also takes a piece of gear that I don’t have: a standard desktop mixer. And not even a super fancy one. As long as it has 3 inputs and an AUX send, we’re good. I don’t have a performance mixer in Eurorack either. At least not after I sold the Xaoc Devices Praga (which would have been perfect for this).
But I do have a stereo matrix mixer, and the will to use it.
I’ll breakdown the patch in a post later this week, but suffice to say that it worked a treat. I got my ping pong delay. It took a fair amount of finagling, particularly with feedback, but I got what I wanted. As soon as I introduced any feedback into the system, it would tend toward self-oscillation, as one might expect. But one fancy trick about tape delays is that they do The Thing. You know, when feedback starts to build, and you can hear it, but it’s just on the edge, not blowing your speakers, riding a wave of sonic beauty, underneath your melody. It really is voodoo. Of course you can go overboard, but tape delays make it a bit easier to ride the wave rather than have it blow up on you. I’m sure the matrix mixer design helps too.
One thing I discovered about the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer is that, probably because it does not introduce any gain, is that it can control feedback fairly easily. Despite feedback running rampantly toward the end of the patch, it never once got out of control, and allowed me to play the tape delay via the echo levels, as well as the EQ knobs of each echo, creating some nice stereo swirl and howling tone changes, without being overly worried about a runaway train of feedback blowing my cans and my ears to smitherines.
My apologies for the repetitive sequence. This really was an experimental session for me, from figuring out the minutiae of ping pong delay, to playing with feedback through my tape echoes. I’ve never done either, and it was surely a treat.
My Jamuary 2416 patch was a straight salvage job. An attempt at saving what beauty existed within a complete mess of a patch. I recorded for quite a while before I was able to get the 17 minute window of something decent I felt good enough about. It’s a snippet from a long recording, much of it me fumbling around with one thing or another. But one other nugget from that recording, and a part I may ultimately like more than my longer patch, was this almost 2 minute snippet right at the beginning before I went and messed it up.
